Getting his start as an honorable man, Samuel Mason served as a militia captain in the American Revolution. Later, however, he would turn pirate on the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers and lead highwaymen along the Natchez Trace.
Samuel Mason was born in Norfolk, Virginia to a distinguished family on November 8, 1739, and raised in what is now Charles Town, West Virginia. He married Rosanna Dorsey in about 1767 and the couple would eventually have eight children. In 1773, he moved his family to Ohio County, West Virginia. During the American Revolution, he became a captain of the Ohio County Militia, Virginia State Forces in January 1777. He was given command of Fort Henry on the Ohio frontier, in present-day West Virginia.
